I.R.S. Inquiry Status Told to White House in April

WASHINGTON — The chief White House lawyer, Kathryn Ruemmler, learned last month that a Treasury inspector general had concluded an audit of the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups, weeks before the matter became public, according to a senior White House official.

The White House counsel’s briefing came about the same time that Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew met with the Treasury inspector general for tax administration, J. Russell George, to learn his draft audit of the controversial I.R.S. effort was complete, the official said.

The acknowledgment that Ms. Ruemmler knew about the I.R.S. inquiry weeks before it became known publicly came as a senior adviser to President Obama, Dan Pfeiffer, mounted a combative defense of the administration on Sunday. He said the controversies enveloping the White House were the result of Republican lawmakers’ trying to “drag Washington into a swamp of partisan fishing expeditions, trumped-up hearings and false allegations.”

Mr. Pfeiffer fanned out to all five major Sunday morning talk shows to move the administration past what commentators have described as a “hell week” of controversy and missteps. He rejected Republican criticisms of the president’s actions and leadership style, calling them “offensive” and “absurd,” and said the administration would not be distracted from doing the nation’s business.

But Republicans pressed their suspicions of a broad cover-up, with several demanding that an independent counsel investigate the I.R.S. efforts. Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee in 2012, said on “Fox News Sunday” that investigators examining the I.R.S. scandal needed to answer critical questions: “Who knew? When did they know? Why did they do this? How high up in government did it go?”

Jay Carney, the White House spokesman, had acknowledged last Monday that Ms. Ruemmler’s office was notified in April of the audit’s completion. Republicans may latch onto the disclosure that knowledge of the inquiry reached the West Wing weeks before it went public to cast doubt on Mr. Obama’s assertion that he learned of the effort from news reports this month. But it did nothing to bolster the Republicans’ central contention that senior administration officials must have known of the targeting in 2012 and kept it under wraps during the presidential campaign.

White House and Treasury officials have tried to regain their footing since a combative hearing Friday before the House Ways and Means Committee.

Mr. George, the inspector general, revealed during the hearing that he had informed the Treasury Department’s general counsel and its deputy secretary, Neal Wolin, early last summer that he was auditing the I.R.S.’s screening of political groups seeking tax-exempt status. That revelation meant that the matter of political targeting had been brought to the attention of senior officials outside the independent I.R.S. during the campaign year.

But administration allies have portrayed that information as an open secret. In a letter dated July 11, 2012, Mr. George informed Representative Darrell Issa, the California Republican who is chairman of the House Oversight Committee, as well.

“We would be happy to provide a status update to the subcommittee staff,” Mr. George assured Mr. Issa after telling him that the audit of tax-exempt screening had begun.

Mr. Wolin may have learned of the inspector general’s inquiry, but he let it go forward without interference, administration officials said. That audit was hardly undisclosed. In October, the inspector general staff posted on its public Web site a list of active investigations and audits, including an examination of the screening of political groups seeking tax-exempt status.

But Republicans were not letting up, with the Senate Finance Committee set to hold a hearing on Tuesday and Mr. Issa’s first hearing on I.R.S. targeting on Wednesday.

Mr. Pfeiffer accused Republicans of exploiting three issues — I.R.S. political targeting; the attack in Benghazi, Libya; and the Justice Department’s subpoenaing of phone records from The Associated Press — for political purposes, even as he urged them to work with the administration on legislation to revamp the immigration system and trim the budget deficit.

But his own words only fed the attacks. On ABC’s news program “This Week,” Mr. Pfeiffer said that he did not know whether laws had been broken at the I.R.S., but that regardless, the agency’s actions were seriously wrong.

“I can’t speak to the law here,” he said. “The law is irrelevant. The activity was outrageous and inexcusable, and it was stopped, and it needs to be fixed so we ensure it never happens again.”

Republicans jumped.

“It is shocking but quite telling that the senior adviser to President Obama, Dan Pfeiffer, would say that ‘the law is irrelevant’ in relation to the I.R.S. scandal,” said Representative Steve Scalise, Republican of Louisiana and a leader of House conservatives.

Correction: May 20, 2013

An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew met with the Treasury inspector general for tax administration, J. Russell George, to learn the conclusions of his draft audit of the controversial I.R.S. effort. In the meeting Mr. Lew only learned that the draft audit was complete

A version of this article appears in print on May 20, 2013, on page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: I.R.S. Inquiry Status Told To White House in April. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe